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Three New Orleans police officers are facing battery charges after investigators reviewed a videotape showing two patrolmen repeatedly punching a 64-year-old man accused of public intoxication and a third officer grabbing and shoving an Associated Press Television News producer who helped capture the confrontation on tape.
After being questioned and arrested, the three officers were suspended without pay Sunday, police spokesman Marlon Defillo said. The police promised a criminal investigation.
"It's a troubling tape, no doubt about it," Defillo said.
The confrontations come as the department — long plagued by allegations of brutality and corruption — struggles with the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and the resignation last month of Police Superintendent Eddie Compass.
The APTN tape shows an officer hitting the suspect, Robert Davis, at least four times in the head Saturday night outside a French Quarter bar. Davis appeared to resist, twisting and flailing as he was dragged to the ground by four officers.
Another of the officers then kneed Davis and punched him twice. Davis was face-down on the sidewalk with blood streaming down his arm and into the gutter.
Then a fifth officer ordered APTN producer Rich Matthews and the cameraman to stop recording. When Matthews held up his credentials, the officer grabbed the producer, leaned him backward over a car, jabbed him in the stomach and unleashed a profanity-laced tirade.
"I've been here for six weeks trying to keep ... alive. ... Go home!" shouted the officer, who identified himself as S.M. Smith.
In addition to Smith, the other officers charged were identified as Lance Schilling and Robert Evangelist. Smith is an eight-year veteran of the force, while Evangelist and Schilling have served three years each.
"The incidents taped by our cameraman are extremely troubling," said Mike Silverman, AP's managing editor. "We are heartened that the police department is taking them seriously and promising a thorough investigation."
Police said Davis, of New Orleans, was booked on public intoxication, resisting arrest, battery on a police officer and public intimidation. He was treated at a hospital and released into police custody.
A mug shot of Davis, provided by a jailer, showed him with his right eye swollen shut, an apparent abrasion on the left side of his neck and a cut on his right temple.
Davis, who is black, was subdued at the intersection of Conti and Bourbon streets. Three of the officers appeared to be white, and the other is light skinned. The officer who hit Matthews is white. Defillo said race was not an issue.
Two of the officers in the video appeared to be federal officers. Numerous agencies have sent police to help with patrols in the aftermath of Katrina, and Defillo said it would be up to their commanders to decide if they would face charges.
Under normal circumstances, it takes unusually offensive behavior to trigger an arrest on Bourbon Street. But New Orleans police have been working under stressful conditions since the hurricane. About 300 officers apparently either died, abandoned their posts or disappeared for some other reason.
Those who stayed slept in their cars and worked 24-hour shifts after the storm. Three-quarters lost their homes and their families are scattered across the country.
"Our police officers are working under some very trying times," Defillo said. "So it's a difficult time, but it doesn't excuse what our jobs are supposed to be."
Conditions have improved — officers now have beds on a cruise ship — but they don't have private rooms and are still working five, 12-hour days.
Compass, the police superintendent, resigned Sept. 27. Despite more than 10 years of reform efforts dating to before he took office, police were dogged by allegations of brutality and corruption.
On Friday, state authorities said they were investigating allegations that New Orleans police broke into a dealership and made off with nearly 200 cars — including 41 new Cadillacs — as the storm closed in.
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An unmanned vehicle has successfully navigated a forbidding 132-mile section of the Mojave Desert. The next stop for the technology may be Afghanistan or Iraq.
A souped-up VW Touareg, designed by Stanford University, zipped through the course in six hours and 53 minutes Sunday, using only its computer brain and sensors to navigate rough and twisting desert and mountain trails.
The robotic vehicles had to navigate a course designed to mimic driving conditions in Iraq and Afghanistan, including winding dirt trails and dry lake beds filled with overhanging brush. Parts of the route forced the robots to zip through three tunnels designed to knock out their GPS signals.
The race is part of the military's effort to fulfill a congressional mandate to cut casualties by having a third of the military's ground vehicles unmanned in 20 years.
The Stanford team — which spent $500,000 on the race, some of which was provided by sponsors — celebrated by popping champagne and pouring it over their mud-covered car called Stanley.
"This car, to me, is really a piece of history," Stanford computer scientist Sebastian Thrun said Sunday after receiving an oversized check for the $2 million prize, funded by taxpayers. He said he did not know how he would spend the money, but jokingly said he needed to buy cat food.
The race, called the Grand Challenge, displayed major technological leaps since last year's inaugural race, when none of the self-driving vehicles crossed the finish line.
In second place was a red Humvee from Carnegie Mellon University called Sandstorm, followed by a customized Hummer called H1ghlander. Coming in fourth was a Ford Escape Hybrid named Kat-5, designed by students in Metairie, La., who lost about a week of practice and some lost their homes when Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast.
The race began Saturday with a field of 23 autonomous vehicles. Eighteen failed to complete the course because of mechanical failures or sensor problems.
It's unclear how the Pentagon plans to harness the technology used in the race for military applications. But Thrun said he wanted to design automated systems to make next-generation cars safer for everyone, not just the military.
"If it was only for the military, I wouldn't be here today," Thrun said.
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Japan's space agency on Monday completed the first successful test of a prototype jet that can fly at twice the speed of sound, three years after an earlier test ended in a fiery wreck in the Australian Outback, an official said.
Kenichi Saito, a spokesman for the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, or JAXA, said Monday's unmanned test flight went "as planned."
"Everything was very good and the aircraft landed ... normally," Saito said in a telephone interview. "We are going to conduct the (data) analysis, but currently we think this flight was a success."
A breakthrough in supersonic flight could help Japan leap ahead in the aerospace field. The country, which manufactures high-tech components for U.S.-based Boeing Co., has only a limited domestic airplane industry.
Saito said the prototype 38-foot-long, arrow-shaped craft, developed by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd., was launched on a rocket and reached a flying altitude of 11 miles before floating back to Earth by parachute.
The test follows a three-year hiatus after the first experimental flight of the unmanned aircraft separated prematurely from its booster rocket and crashed into the desert.
Monday's $10 million experiment marked a crucial step in Japan's plans to develop a larger supersonic aircraft that can carry 300 passengers between Tokyo and Los Angeles in about four hours.
It also underpinned a June agreement between Japan and France to jointly research a possible successor to the Concorde over the next three years.
The Concorde first flew in 1969 and became a symbol of French and European industrial prowess. In July 2000, a Concorde crashed in flames after takeoff from Charles de Gaulle airport near Paris, killing 109 people. The sleek but costly planes were retired from commercial service in 2003, never having recouped the billions of tax dollars invested in them.
Japan hopes to have a successor making regular flights by around 2025, Saito said.
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While Ed Forchion remains mired in legal troubles and no closer to seeing himself in front of the U.S. Supreme Court to argue his right to smoke marijuana, things don't look half bad for the New Jersey Weedman. He can now smoke all he wants and test his interpretation of federal laws without the fear of jail time.
Following the Nov. 12 sentencing hearing where he received a year of probation and a $150 fine for drug possession after organizing a series of marijuana smoke-outs at the Liberty Bell, Forchion was worried. "Pencil me in jail," he said, knowing he wouldn't have much luck passing court-ordered drug testing.
Forchion's argument was simple. Since he is Rastafarian, smoking marijuana is a religious sacrament. As such, he was protected to do so on federal property thanks to the 1993 Religious Freedom Act. The judge, however, didn’t see things the same way.
Less than two months later, however, Forchion seems to have caught a break. His motion for a stay of sentence (a plea to the District Court to throw out his punishment while he goes through the appeal process) was granted by U.S. District Judge Stewart Dalzell earlier this month.
Forchion authored the motion, which cites freedoms provided by the First Amendment, attacks U.S. Magistrate Court Judge Arnold Rapoport (he sentenced Forchion and co-defendant Patrick Duffy), and says he should be exempt from drug testing altogether. In short, the charges and probation conditions represent an unconstitutional religious persecution, maintains Forchion.
In his Jan. 7 order, Dalzell wrote, "because staying Forchion's sentence will not endanger the public or seriously undermine any important public interest, the risk of irreparable injury to Forchion from being subjected to potentially invalid restraints on his liberty requires us to stay his sentence."
For Forchin, this is a massive relief. Though he didn't test positive for marijuana once during his probation, he said there was no way he was going to stop smoking the "sacrament."
"It moves my case to court," says Forchion. "I don't fight it from a jail cell."
The appeals court is likely to rule within two months. Until then, Forchion knows what he'll be doing.
Rock On, NJ Weedman.
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